On Six Months of New Keys, Unforgivable Curses, and Undeniable Joy

Aveon Air is celebrating!

We are six months into exploring our new keys, six months into our founder’s survival, and six months into a lifelong commitment to Be The Last! Thank you for being part of our new journey, and partner with us as we continue this important work. We are just getting started!

Website Stats:

666 Page Visits (ruh roh, sorry ceiling cat)

442 Unique Visitors

1.7K Pageviews

12 Countries

Top Fans:

Huntington, WV wears the crown with 73 visits, barely edging out our Perrysburg, OH peeps with 62 visits.

Blog Reach:

“I laughed and sang a new song…” is our most read blog post to date with 106 views, and a great place to start if you’re new around here.

“Synthetic Silk” is our year to date leader with 30 views, and is a testament of our commitment to preventing future harm.

Check back soon for more - we will be adding a recap of highlights and reflections on what six months of survival looks like from the inside.

synthetic silk

I hope you know about the other sort of spider. The ones who smell like home, and look like family, and leave corpses and ghosts in their wake. I hope you know about cosmo-nots, fauxtons, and men who strangle.

Love has a funny way of finding its way. After all, even Aragog enjoyed years of companionship with Mosag.

But this isn’t love. And I know - I do know. About the first night. The golden light. The gasps and giggles and great big dreams. The rush, the current, sweeping you off of your feet and downstream, downwind. Downward.

Always downward.

You’ll never see golden light like that again. It’ll glimmer here and there. Just enough to make you think you’re as crazy as he says you are.

You know, when he’s got his forehead pressed so hard into yours it’ll be sore for days. Crushed into a corner, bent backward over a counter, or pinned to the floor or the bed. His vise grip on your wrists, his teeth gritted, taunting you with that menacing snarl.

And then it’s over, and he’s gone. And he’s back. And he’s sorry.

And then he’s not.

And fear hangs thick in the air, robbing you of your peace, your safety, your sanity.

You are sane, but this treacherous dance isn’t.

You are a safe person, but you know in your heart of hearts this won’t end well.

You cherish your peace, but you slowly realize that it was the first fly in the web. The first meal. The first of many corpses.

He stole it right after the damn broke.

They call it “love bombing”, but they don’t tell you that it doesn’t make a sound. Or that you’ll be set ablaze but he’ll blame you for every wisp of smoke that he inhales. Or that the shrapnel will burrow into you - into your skin, into your mind, into your soul - in imperceptibly slow motion, and extricating all of it will be impossible. You’ll forever be riddled with shards and scars and shadows of what never existed - not even on that first night.

You’re beautiful.

Vibrant.

Brave.

Full of life.

And he’s wonderful, isn’t he?

Aren’t you just so proud to be his? Excited to have found “it”? Lucky to share such an incredible bond?

And those twinges in your gut, the disbelief when he’s calling you a selfish asshole for disagreeing with him because he’s too fragile and special to endure it? You keep it to yourself. You sacrifice more and more to the orchid. You fix your face. You keep your big emotions in check. You wake in the night to find him on the couch instead of wrapped around you in bed. You give him his space, his time, his respect.

He gives you nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

He’s that sort of spider.

The sort that will tear down your home, and eat your family, and when there is nothing left but the breath in your lungs and the blood in your veins - he’ll take that too.

I was his light, his always, his queen.

And now I am just another ghost in his wake; an almost corpse.

My saving grace was his inability to follow through. Strong start; weak finish. He gripped my throat and squeezed with every ounce of strength he had, but the con artist just couldn’t compete with the canvas. He wasn’t blotting me out of existence. He was setting me free.

The river that swept you away is the blood of the corpses before you, and the ink of a lifetimes worth of false narratives, and the sweat that dripped from his brow into my eyes as my brain began to die, and the crocodile tears he’s likely already shed as he pleads with you to surrender all.

All to thee, my future killer, I surrender all.

I am the luckiest ghost on the planet, a joyful almost corpse. But he tore down my home and he ate my children.

The golden light is a trap, used by the sort of spider who cannot bear to let you see what lies beneath his web of lies.

A predator. A monster. A murderer.

I hope you see it before he makes his last promise - the only one he ever intends to keep.

“I will put you in the ground!”

You deserve the truth - not a grave.

And the truth is he is already making plans for your wake, because this sort of spider will destroy anyone who finds out why he so desperately protects his “good name”.

Miscarriage. Epilepsy. Stroke. Thyroid Damage. PTSD. Speech Disorders. Amnesia.

From clinical neuropsychologist Kristen Dams-O'Connor, PhD, Director of the Brain Injury Research Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai:

“Findings suggested both mechanical injury and hypoxic-ischemic—caused by a lack of blood flow and oxygen—injury that can arise from nonfatal strangulation (NFS). There were also higher-than-expected rates of substance abuse, psychiatric conditions, and HIV infection, along with epilepsy, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.”

Read more HERE.

From New Jersey State Police Victim Services Unit:

“If you have experienced a strangulation and/or smothering incident it is vital that you seek medical attention. Even if you feel fine right now, strangulation can cause internal injuries, brain damage, and delayed health consequences, such as strokes, thyroid issues, miscarriage, or even death. These effects can occur days or weeks after the incident, sometimes without any visible signs of injury.”

Read more HERE.

From We Can’t Consent to This: The Horrifying Harms of Choking:

“Strangulation is more dangerous than waterboarding: this is because it doesn’t just block the airway, but also the brain’s blood supply. Waterboarding is now considered inhumane, even when its stated aim is to prevent mass terrorism. But there is something morally wrong about a society which still turns a blind eye to the intimate terrorism of thousands of women each week in the UK.”

Read more HERE.

Attorney General Coleman Releases Kentucky’s First-Ever Toolkit to Protect from Strangulation

Maybe Santa is real, because I can’t think of a better gift - Kentucky just rolled out “Responding to Strangulation in Kentucky: Guidelines for Prosecutors, Law Enforcement, Health Care Providers and Victim Advocates”, a toolkit to combat the horrific crime of strangulation.

While our great commonwealth was one of the last states to make strangulation a felony, this manual is one of the first of its kind across the country.

To celebrate, Aveon Air added a dedicated page to house the press release and a link to the manual. Check it out HERE.

Awareness is spreading, but we have so much work ahead of us to ensure that every strangulation victim in Kentucky receives the medical care, safety, and justice they deserve. Part of the work is building bridges between worlds that tend to collide more than they collaborate: the traditional patriarchy of law enforcement and the dedicated matriarchy of advocacy.

I raise this point every time I speak about strangulation, but it bears repeating: men who strangle are far more likely to kill not only their partners, but many others including law enforcement officers. The people who serve and protect our communities are well aware that each day may bring their end of watch, but when strangulation is detected and prosecuted, the risk of homicide is lowered for everyone.

A few weeks ago I met a female officer who works in a nearby city, and she shared that one case in particular haunts her. She has spent countless unpaid hours working to support the prosecution of a violent, sadistic, dangerous man who strangled his partner. I am touched by her dedication, and I also hope that this toolkit means that she and people like her won’t feel so isolated and burdened.

Experiencing the terror of strangulation at the hands of a partner is to be shattered from the inside out. Grasping that your partner is a killer who raised his hand in sickening secrecy; to be buried alive by the system for daring to survive…my pain and hope and rage and vision and strength all point toward one goal: I want to BE THE LAST.

Thank you, Kentucky, for this toolkit. Thank you for choosing to unmask the murderers among us. Thank you for teaching all of us how to recognize the ghosts of the raised hands. If we know where to look, we can’t help but to see.

Where there is smoke, there are dangerous men hellbent on lighting candles for senseless, preventable vigils.

It’s time that they were lashed to the pyre in town square and reduced to nothing more than a pile of ashes.

I laughed and sang a new song…

The Office on Violence Against Women defines domestic abuse as a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner.

Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship.

This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.

+ + +

My mental health provider lamented today, “You know, we have laws that address physical abuse, but not mental or emotional.” I shook my head. “Not in this country, no. Other countries do. They know the emotional can be more damaging than the physical.”

One of the many things I’ve learned during the last three months is that the most dangerous abusers are the ones who are careful to not leave marks. The ones who lie to you and about you. The ones who never take accountability for anything. These are the abusers who will kill you to protect their optics, because that’s all they are. Most of us contain a measure of substance, and conscience, and virtue, but the men lurking behind these masks contain absolutely nothing but an abyss of inadequacy.

Three months ago, my abuser dropped the mask, and I witnessed the wretch that crawled out. While my heart breaks with the knowledge that I cannot Be The Last - many women have been murdered since September - I can still be a light, and I can be a voice, and I can and will spend the rest of my living days combatting depravity in disguise. His brutality is no match for me; I’ll spend my life digging beauty from the bottom of my grave.

+ + +

The following was written approximately one month post-attack as I worked toward safety. There has been no safety, but some of the darkness has shifted into peace, clarity, and the next right steps: toward safety for others. I may not leave Harlan alive, but I will keep sending the money back to Granny. I’m filling my cup with something better, not bitter.

+ + +

I am a victim warrior working to survive domestic abuse and domestic violence intimate partner terrorism, and the trajectory of my relationship tracks so closely with the typical abusive relationship that it could be summed up in one word: “textbook”. I do not want to be trapped in this textbook any longer, and I do not want to join yet another statistical cohort of abused women, because in my case the only cohort that remains is homicide.

Although subtle at the onset, the tactics that my abuser employed grew louder with time, culminating in a phrase that he repeatedly roared at me three months ago: “I will put you in the ground!”

From early in the relationship, he began to rob me of emotional and physical safety, and cruelly stripped away or prohibited any protection I might seek. I hung on for dear life and was shattered over and over again by “the cycle” - a neatly condensed, colorful infographic in every “textbook”; a wheel of misfortune illustrating the phases of abuse.

"And you can call the cops if you like. That's your right. But it won't make things easier or better for you. Believe me, I know. I've seen it before." (April 11, 2024)

"I could beat your ass with a glass of ice tea and not spill a drop." (April 29, 2024)

“If I was weak, I’d beat your ass all those times you acted like a disrespectful cunt.” (May 27, 2024)

“Whatever I say, and whatever I decide will fucking happen.” (June 20, 2024)

“I will put you in the ground!” (September 1, 2024)

I moved myself and my children to a separate residence in May 2024, after the abuse reached an intolerable level. I will forever be grateful that I had the foresight and the courage to make that move, but I did not fully understand the danger of leaving without a pre-established safety plan. Studies show that abusers do not react well when they lose control over their victims. Now I know that the most dangerous time for a survivor is when they leave the abusive partner; 75% of domestic violence related homicides occur upon separation and there is a 75% increase of violence upon separation for at least two years.

Between May and September 2024, I experienced a marked escalation of emotional, verbal, sexual, digital, and physical abuse. As I coordinated after school care for my children, adopted a personal budget that I faithfully honored, read more books, visited more family, and enjoyed more peace, my abuser spun out of control. Our marital home became littered with garbage, expired and rotting food, dirty laundry, and alcohol. He created and actively used a dating profile (and created two more in the days following the attempt on my life), complete with pictures I had taken of him. He told me that he was “mourning the death” of his family, and the abuse was temporarily interrupted by periods of emotional and physical absence. Until it wasn’t.

I first considered filing an EPO in July 2024, after he inflicted a painful facial injury followed by 48 hours of intense devaluation and threats via text and email. In the days that followed I began, for the first time in my life, to exhibit symptoms of PTSD. As he shifted phases and the vile onslaught fermented into sickening-sweet attempts to reel me back in, I began having night terrors. As he sent unwanted motivational quotes and cruel attempts at humor, I sobbed in an exam room when an X-ray of my face showed no broken bones. I was grasping the importance of evidence, sagging under the burden of proof. I needed to be hurt badly enough to be believed.

As I grappled with confusion and fear, the abuse that felt ugly and unfair and at times even unconscionable was evolving. I watched in horror as the man I once believed was the love of my life entered his most lethal era.

What happened next was “textbook”.

He profusely apologized. He promised that he had seen the light, was going to change, and that he would do everything in his power to keep me safe. He admitted in writing and in person that he had abused me from the very beginning, assured me that he didn’t blame me at all for what he could now see was reasonable behavior from a woman who did not feel safe in her own home, and bombarded me with all manner of neatly wrapped and deadly traps.

In August 2024, he convinced me to move back in.

In September 2024, he strangled me.

I did not know, even as he gripped my throat and gritted his teeth, squeezing until my face contorted into a gutted panic, exactly what that meant.

Between September 1st and September 2nd 2024, he forcefully and intentionally strangled me no fewer than seven times, while simultaneously suffocating me by way of his knee on my stomach or chest. I am 5’2, and before the attack I was 135 pounds, eight heavier than I am now. He is 5’9 and weighs more than 200 pounds.

Like many women, I unintentionally minimized it into a detail, a footnote. I called it choking, and emphasized the other violent methods he employed: kneeling on my chest, dragging me by my hair, and landing a final open-handed blow to my head and face that left me dazed on the floor. It was the reason I called 911 from my watch. I assumed it was the reason I struggled to breathe and think and speak when the officers arrived. The reason they misread the situation, failed to recognize his wounds as defensive, and my lack of visible wounds as a chilling warning sign that I should be rushed to the hospital immediately. There was no lethality assessment, no thermal imaging, and no ambulance called; only handcuffs.

As I lay in a jail cell for 24 hours, crying because the heavy, rough smock cut into my swollen neck, and the not-a-bed jail bed hurt my bruised head, and the ceiling spun and my ears throbbed and my nausea swelled, and I consumed no food or water for nearly a day, I contributed my symptoms to a different traumatic brain injury: a concussion stemming from blunt force trauma.

For the next several days, I was dizzy. So dizzy I could feel my entire body being tugged at by an invisible force. So nauseated that I didn’t eat a real meal until midday on September 5th. So unsteady and sluggish, my thinking and speaking halting, thick, clumsy. A desperate, stunted zombie, at times sobbing and at times staring into space, my body twitching and my head floating strangely, as if my neck couldn’t balance it without bobbling about. My neck that bore a bruise of his thumbprint.

An ambulance ride to the ER.

A primary care follow-up.

A second ER visit.

No headache.

“What a strange concussion”, I thought.

On September 9th, in the wee hours of the morning, I learned why.

I realized that I wasn’t choked. Although a prevalent term that is widely recognized and evokes images of hands gripping throats, it is not the correct term.

I am a survivor of strangulation.

Repeated, forceful strangulation.

I may well have had a concussion, because I certainly sustained some heavy blows to the head, but my symptoms indicate post-strangulation brain injury due to brain cell death, a result of having my airway and blood supply so violently interrupted.

Strangulation is one of the most dangerous and deadly acts of violence that an abuser can use, and it is a powerful indicator that the abuser will go on to kill. The following is an excerpt from the article “A Dangerous Link: From Stranglers to Cop Killers”:

“The most dangerous domestic violence offenders strangle their victims. The most violent rapists strangle their victims. It used to be thought that all abusers were equal.

They are not.

Research has now made clear that when a man puts his hands around a woman’s neck, he has just raised his hand and said, “I’m a killer.” He is more likely to kill police officers, to kill children, and to later kill his partner. So, when you hear “He choked me,” now you know...you are at the edge of a homicide.”

The moment I moved out of the marital home and into a townhouse, I was in danger based on statistics alone, and four months later my abuser of four years put his hands around my neck and reintroduced himself as my future killer.  

+ + +

Big Banana | small banana

🍌Big Banana, small banana🍌

Choking refers to airway obstruction.

Think “Big Banana”.

Strangulation refers to pressure applied to the neck that blocks the flow of blood and oxygen. Often used by men against female intimate partners, controlling whether you take another breath is worth the risk that you might die right then and there.

Think “small banana”.

A miserable, inadequate, and dangerous small banana who is 750% more likely to murder the partners they strangle.

🍌Know Your Banana🍌

Soup Kitchens, Bowls, and Hands that Hold

A hardware store employee mistook me for a soup kitchen last weekend. This man made a clumsy attempt to hit on me, and regardless of player, I hate that game. He clearly didn’t listen to a word I said in the store, or when he followed me to my car under the guise of helping me - “help” I had politely declined four times and only made lifting a heavy piece of equipment twice as awkward and dangerous. He made a presumptuous statement that implied my consent to conversing with him, but he didn’t want to share conversation. He wanted conversation from me.

It was clear that I had nothing to do with his pursuit, and it was obvious he had no idea what he was actually pursuing. He wanted what I have. I was glowing. Felt like shit physically but couldn’t help but smile. Touching tools, any tools, makes my mercury rise. I was laughing, joking, my voice was strong and steady. In that moment, old timers would say “son, you couldn’t tell her a thing!” I’ve never refinished wooden floors, and my mother, brother and I were tackling it together; subsidizing our limited time and budget with elbow grease and optimism (yay, we killed did it!). I was on cloud nine, and it couldn’t be fully contained.

The absence of my abuser’s chaos has made an abundance of space for my peace, joy, and passion, and surviving attempted murder injects an added measure of gratitude into each waking moment. I had long known what I loved, and on that gorgeous day I was gnawing my own bone.

And I could see the desperation, the undeniably hungry look in that man’s eyes long before he opened his mouth and removed all doubt.

He saw what I had, and he thought I could feed him.

There is one thing I know to be true in every lifetime, at every age, for every single soul - the only person who can feed you is you.

It’s the opposite concept of the Wayside School Ice Cream story. If he tried to gnaw my bone, it would taste like nothing. Satisfy nothing. And I pity anyone who can’t grasp that each of us contain all of the ingredients required for a feast that never spoils, or that the ingredients are as unique as our DNA, or that they are the only person who can prepare this meal.

Eventually he landed in my inbox with his second presumptuous and  problematic statement, so I took the opportunity to educate this man about the difference in being “nice”, a vacuous pseudo-virtue and word he had chosen to describe me, and being “kind”, a much more corporeal characteristic that I strive to maintain. I made it clear that he had brought his appetite to the wrong person. I am not a soup kitchen, sir. Now if you’ll please excuse me, I am in the middle of my meal. “Bone” appétit!

When I returned the equipment the next day, he was working, and I greeted him brightly - after all, it was a beautiful morning, I had easily lifted the tool out of my car, and my eyes were open and my body above ground. I was blissfully sober on life, a state that no intoxication can mimic or match. He treated me as a vaguely familiar acquaintance, and asked me to confirm my first name. Perhaps he hadn’t even caught that the day before, trapped by his gnawing hunger. Oliver Twist and his empty bowl…

A couple days later I was driving and made a quick stop at a Turnpike travel plaza. Standing in line to place an order, I noticed the front was off of a refrigerated case, and a Veto backpack sat beside a small pile of tools - property of an apparent Milwaukee devotee. The Milwaukee kneepads and hi-viz shirt on the gentleman in front of me caught my eye, and I brightly inquired “How do you like that backpack Veto?” I had just taken a selfie in my car, and was amused that my own Veto bag and a package of baby wipes had photobombed. I thought “I wear a lot of hats…what a blessing.”

The man was slightly confused at first, and then realized I wasn’t speaking a strange language. It was the tongue of his trade, just an unexpected mouth. He brightened back, and enthusiastically gave an honest review - the bag was great, but as he frequently worked on the travel plaza rooftops, he found that clearing the roof hatch could be challenging with the extra backside bulk. Our interaction was brief, and although we were both purchasing a meal, neither of us were hollowed out by hunger. We were breaking our individual bread together; toasting a trade that is fascinating, challenging, and provides endless justification for one more bag and one more tool.

We didn’t exchange names, but I’m sure I’d know him and he would know me if we crossed paths again. When neither pair of hands is gripping a bowl, what is remembered is the person for whom the hands hold.

My friends, that’s the goal.

——

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it and gnaw it still.

-Henry David Thoreau.

“Honey, I’m home!”

I was smiling to myself, enjoying the steady stream of thoughts, memories, and ideas that had been flowing since the moment I opened my eyes. I was shifting into the mindset I enjoy most – that life is to be savored, that we should look inward and see and live outward and be, and that every single second that we exist holds something to be gained or gleaned or grateful for. This mindset is both comforting and convicting; it centers awe, and awe is such an accessible experience that I believe we can summon in the majority of situations we move through, save for only the most intense negative experiences that invoke terror. The opposite of awe is not terror, however, and it is not anger, or disgust, or fear. It’s apathy. Disinterest. Incuriosity. This makes me smile more, as I think to myself “How the f*ck could you be alive in this world and not be interested or curious or passionate about something? How??”

And then it hit me. I had forgotten to be scared that day. I had parked outside of a store that my abuser knows I like, had walked inside without a care in the world, and hadn’t performed my usual quick and careful assessment of my surroundings.

For the past 10 weeks, every single public outing has involved nervously scanning vehicles, scanning faces. Locating exits, noticing every movement in my line of sight, and operating with the utmost efficiency so that I could get in, get out, and head back to safety as quickly as humanly possible. As a survivor who did not have a safety plan* prior to the attempt on my life, I found myself scrambling to comprehend and find my place in a system that was working against me. My initial attempts to navigate the available resources left me feeling more alone and more scared than I had ever felt in my entire lifetime. I sought protection and was exposed, and I sought justice and was reminded that I was the one charged with a crime**. In the absence of protection and justice, one must learn to take great care. It never felt natural, but it did become routine – my heart would beat faster, my pace would quicken, and I would willingly engage in sensory overload. Racing the clock, avoiding any nonessential public appearances, and living in the shadow of danger.

When a woman is strangled by an intimate partner, she is 750% more likely to be murdered by that partner than a woman who has never been strangled. 750% more likely to be murdered by that partner within a year. Most likely with a gun.***

Those odds are simply part of my reality now, and no matter how positive my attitude is or how well things are going in other areas, I cannot do anything to influence the likelihood of a future attempt. My power lies in detection, preparation, and hope. If it happens, there will be no fight. My abuser can gain access to rooftops more easily than the average person, and you simply cannot mitigate the immediate damage done by a well-placed bullet. My gumption, grit, and grace will be…gone.

But on this beautiful day, smack dab in the middle of the most nourishing, encouraging, and absorbing expanse of hours I had enjoyed for quite some time, I was so relaxed I didn’t even know what time it was. I pulled out my phone, grinning, thinking “Well shit…” in my best Leslie Jordan voice. It was time to get moving, run one last errand, and get back to my desk to kick off a mentorship series with a colleague who was hungry to learn.

It was a landmark moment in my recovery, because although the danger is in no way diminished, it has been permanently relocated to the place where it belongs: I must have a solid grasp on what I’m facing. I will not allow what I’m facing to have a solid grasp on me.

I paid for my things (another outfit for court, yay!), strolled out to my car, and settled back into the place where I belong: an expanse of breathtaking possibility, sparkling with infinite opportunities for awe.

“Honey,” I thought, again in my Leslie Jordan voice, “I’m home!”

 ______

*I moved to a separate residence earlier this year. While I was fully aware that I was being abused and that the abuse was the primary reason for the move, I was not aware that leaving an abuser is a very dangerous time, or that his gun ownership and my having children from a previous marriage are risk factors known to increase the odds of harm or homicide immediately following the move. For four months, my abuser became increasingly erratic, manipulative, violent, and enraged. I was anticipating peace and was so proud of myself for taking what I thought was a brave step in the direction of a happy marriage. I now know that I was not in a marriage, and that peace was never a possibility. I was viewed as a possession, and the only value I held in my abuser’s eyes was tied to his ability to use me. When he could no longer possess or use me, he tried to permanently dispose of me.

**I called 911 for the first time in my life after my abuser lunged at me from behind and hit me very hard in the head. He had warned me, verbally and in messages, that I should not involve law enforcement. I did not learn about the danger of strangulation until one week later. Although I told one of the responding officers that he had his “hands around my neck” and “knee on my chest”, I experienced what many strangulation survivors face: my lack of visible injuries and trouble communicating, coupled with a bruise on my abuser’s inner arm and his steady stream of dishonest communication, led the officers to believe that I was the primary aggressor. They did not utilize a danger assessment, lethality assessment, or strangulation assessment. They arrested me for assault, and I will be grateful for that until my dying day because for the first 24 hours in four years, my abuser could not contact me or physically gain access to me. He tried to bail me out. I was suffering through a painful medical emergency after being strangled and suffocated at least five times that day and twice the day before, and I should have been in a hospital and not a jail cell, but I survived and have recovered most of my physical and mental faculties.

***One week after I was arrested, I learned about strangulation. I learned about danger assessments. I began to grasp how serious my situation had been prior to moving out, and how much danger I was facing for the foreseeable future. There was so much I wasn’t aware of. My abuser’s violence and coercive control were NOT my fault, and they almost ended my life. If I had known some of the basic statistics and risk factors, I would have planned my escape in secrecy and gone no-contact four months before he tried to kill me. I am so grateful for the clarity of going no-contact, grateful for the ability to tell all of my story to my loved ones in my own words, and grateful that my parents are prepared if they get that dreaded phone call one day. I am committed to sharing what I’ve learned with others, and to identifying every potential prevention and intervention point. I want to Be The Last! The last woman to experience the terror of strangulation.

Six Weeks Asunder

…six weeks asunder from the promise of six feet under, and still I rise…

x x x

I began October with the privilege of being present in the capitol rotunda for the Kentucky Domestic Violence Awareness Month proclamation signing and press conference hosted by ZeroV. I was encouraged by the compassion and momentum that filled the room, and sobered to silent tears as names were spoken and candles were lit. One for each known, reported, and recognized life lost to intimate partner terrorism. Knowing that there were and are multitudes more. I came away from that experience with more knowledge, more hope, and more perspective. I learned things I didn’t want to be true, and realized things that will never be false. One of the takeaways for me was finding a way to begin sharing the gifts I have been given. I began posting daily on Facebook, using the #DVAM hashtag. It’s been scary. It’s been cathartic. It’s been daunting. It’s been freeing. Today, I want to share my post from #DVAM Day 16; a day I will never forget.

x x x

#DVAM Day 16: Amplifying Individual Stories + Harnessing Collective Power = Lasting Change

Today held so much JOY! Yes, joy! I’m six weeks out from surviving an attack that involved repeated, violent strangulation and brutal blows to the head, being handcuffed for the crime of surviving, and enduring weeks of pain, fear, loss, limitation, and perpetual depletion of any remaining resources.

But I’m also six weeks into my new life, my new beginning, and my newfound calling: advocacy. I want to transform what has been taken from me into gifts that I can share with others. I want to reach me, but six weeks ago. Six months ago. Six years ago, before I met my abuser. I am reclaiming everything about this reprehensible use of me and my children as prey and protection from prying eyes and using it to starve those who consume and cower in the shadows, wicked and weak.

Tonight, I connected with more of MY kind of people. I joined 100 Women Lexington, and as they embark on a new chapter of their story and work toward enhancing their reach you’ll (hopefully!) see them in your news feed frequently. I fell in love with the people, the purpose, and the procedure: members make an annual contribution, and funds are then equitably disbursed to their partner organizations - local, vetted, impactful organizations who collectively respond to women and children in crisis, and work tirelessly to lift them out of poverty, abuse, addiction, trauma, and slavery. Organizations who have helped and are still helping me. The most appealing aspect to me, as a CPA devoted to exclusively serving nonprofits, is that contributing to 100 Women results in these organizations receiving an annual, estimable, and reliable amount of funding that enables them to plan for the long term.

Any dollar directed toward helping others in need is a blessing, but in terms of sustainability and efficiency, it’s an enhanced blessing when those dollars are bundled into an unrestricted, recurring source of funds. A foundation that can be built upon.

Today held many moments that were difficult. In some ways, it was one of the hardest days I’ve had in a long time. But what makes me different from my abuser is that I will sit with that pain, learn from it, and then release it in the form of progress. Helping my kids heal, picking up the pieces of a shattered life, showing up for my clients who are changing their pockets of the world in big ways, and seeking to share these gifts I’ve been given in as many ways as I can.

I am a survivor, but I’ll never settle for survival. I will thrive, I will triumph, and someday I will leave behind a legacy of love.

💜🕯️